The musings, witterings and observations of a medical student on the cusp of entering 3rd year. Join me as the adventure (ordeal?) of clinical training begins...

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

The wagon is creaking into gear

Today I logged on to the medical school intranet, where notices, timetables, PBL cases and plenty of other useful things our accessible. I’ve been doing this regularly hoping to find some new info about 3rd year and partly just force of habit. After weeks of nothing much there are updates!

The next year’s worth of PBL cases have been uploaded, all TWENTY FIVE of them… Wow, I’m still unsure how exactly they will integrate the cases into the hospital setting and if I will end up spending as much time having to read books and make notes as I have the past two years. However, a cursory glance over a few scenarios shows that there are a few innovations in the style. Apparently there is more emphasis on test results, management etc. and also some accompanying material such as GP and hospital letters. The sheer volume of cases is a bit disconcerting, but I’m hoping that they’ll be thought-provoking and the hospital work will be relevant. I doubt I’ll read over any of the cases until I know which module I’ll be starting. That’s the next thing I’m waiting for: timetable please! I would love to find out that I have a couple of late starts per week and a few early finishes, but I suppose that’s wishful thinking.

Another link that caught my eye took me to a mind-numbingly long word document outlining everything I could hope to know about the organization of the student-selected components, of which I will be undertaking two, in each of the next two years. Lots of guff in there, although plenty of useful information regarding marking criteria and the skills they want to be displayed. Unfortunately I can see the potential for these modules to take on an element of hoop-jumping, ensuring you tick all the right boxes for your tutor without necessarily learning a great deal. Fingers crossed that there will be an ample number of ‘kind’ topics when the time comes to choose (as yet they haven’t provided any details about individual titles, only that they will be hospital or community-based).

2 comments:

I'm a fourth year medic in Manchester - welcome to your clinical year. Let me assure you that SSC would turn out to be a better experience than you think. I know reading the document made it sound very dry but my last two clinical SSCs were the best time I've ever had in medical school. The range of topics offered is usually vast. You get much more quality one-to-one supervision and teaching. (Though it can be a case of luck that you'd get a couldn't-care-less consultant) Doctors don't see you as 'the group of medical student wandering around waiting to be taught', rather treat you more as part of the team, which means that you'll have more fun.